I bought this from a dude at a flea market who was hawking it for a Halloween costume, I think in November. I tend to believe every time a prop is reconvened back into a tool, some celestial pawl tinkles gladly out in the heavens, as well as in some basic safety standards for Halloween parties, but nevermind, here's the story to make a handle ($40 new) from hardware store parts:
A grip (douglas fir; oak would've been nice) Fortunately had one surviving grip to guide me: layout (x4), crosscut x4.
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chisel out (x4, sand/chisel to smooth corners (lathe would've been nice):
drill a hole (drill press would've been nice). More sanding. Following a Burkean respect for tradition ("ebast is lazy... the species is wise") I copied (with a chisel) from the remaining grip the hexagonal counterbore. This seats the hex nut rather than if you were to make an admittedly-easier round counterbore with a wood bit. (very glad I did. the implication is that the nib grip can self-tighten; more on this below.)
add a bronze flanged bearing (first plausible bitbob I found in the hardware store)
(cut a channel in a (new better fitting) flanged bearing for hanger strap using variously a hacksaw, fret saw and file) and Bob's your uncle!
the hafting collar is mysteriously missing more parts than when I purchased it. Moar hanger strap, a carriage bolt. If this works out, maybe I'll machine a little more solid plate here. like the original. Or I'll go mow the grass to see where I^H it disappeared.
p.s. Maybe this is burying the lede a bit but this blade was still straight from the factory. literally. Tang has to be bent to get a blade that'll do anything like cut. Apparently they did not come pre-bent as tangs need to be set to the idiosyncratic geometry of the particular snath (pole) and user. Somewhere I also read that back in the pre-glyphosate days railways were cleared by teams of workers reaching down from handcars, in which case you might use a straight brush blade. Whatever, point being, you need a blacksmith, or a welder, or
the right way to do it to heat up the shank to glowing red, and then swiftly bend the tang to the desired angle. I no longer have any of these or even a friend with oxyacetylene torch nearby so proceeded through butane (ha!), propane (eh..), to map-pro (now we're cooking with gas!, kind of) torches where in ten minutes I could get a dull red--sorta--on the large shank of this blade. No photos because I was waving a torch around and trying to grab a pickle fork before the blade cooled. With long low heat, and multiple fumbling attempts, I was pretty worried at this point about damaging the temper of the blade which I tried to protect
with a potato, wet rags, etc and am still not sure if I did. but to add my dimple of wisdom to the species: map-pro, a bunch of leverage (plumber's wrench), and brute force works on brush blades. I didn't quite get to my theoretical target angle but close enough to start using it and see in practice which way my target was wrong.
A distinguishing characteristic...
Time to sharpen (I should buy a traditional curved stone ($20-30?) but I had an old King #1000 lying around. Lying around not being used due to a drawback: they wear fast. Good. Here I can shape it to a curved stone. By sharpening.)
Now that eternal
No Mow May is almost over, time to make hay.
I believe this is a thick, hulking weed blade. Not ideal for grass but not the worst thing right now for the various wild mustard family representatives, thistles, blackberry canes, and small saplings that show up when you spend eight months intermittently reconditioning a scythe instead of mowing the damn lawn.
Some notes. These nibs are traditionally left-hand threaded. My hardware store didn't have such carriage bolts on hand so I used right-handed. 15-20 hours of use in, I've not noticed it to loosen any more often than the existing lower left-hand threaded nib and lately not at all. Also, when designing this hack, I thought about decoupling the wooden grip from the attachment mechanism to the snath by drilling it out enough for a nut and washer to contact the bearing directly, then use a second nut to attach the grip to that. (Otherwise I had concerns about my grip surviving the degree of tightening necessary not to slip.) I'm really glad I didn't because in the first-few-hours-of-use fitting stage I must've changed nib configuration forty times. Light tightening and immediate feedback is the way. You can do this sufficiently out in the field by torquing the handles directly; no fumbling for a wrench or socket needed.
In fact, an added bonus: the combination of a right-handed and left-handed bolt balances the torque when tightening. It's a little perk, not like I'd swap out an existing left-handed thread for it, but it's satisfying. A haptic analogy: Next time you're on a date at a white tablecloth (or similarly low-frictional-coefficient) kind of place for steak dinner, hold your fork in a loose fist with your left hand and stab it into your steak in the fashion you would if
your date was Neel Kashkari (acct req'd). Ask politely to borrow your date's fork which you should then lodge similarly a few inches to the right in your right hand.
Now, in the makeshift configuration I ended up with, tightening a nib without moving a hand feels roughly like this: take your two forks and twist them toward each other: try it using some force. Your steak may tear and shear off at the bottom or top given the degree of effort which may impress your date as well as those of neighboring diners. But please observe that the effort is mostly balanced and you are able to readily control it like a yoke while eliciting peals of delight or amusement from your companion.
Suppose, on the other hand, you have two left handed bolts. Now in order to tighten a nib, take both forks and, with some force, rotate both sharply counter-clockwise. The steak slides, the plate slides, the table slides...
Meanwhile, should your date ask just what it is you think you're doing, put your hand gently but resolutely over theirs and say something like "Neel, the real troubled assets... they're in our hearts-" and here you can point around you, then look deeply into your date's eye(s) to say, "I never wanted any of this. What I'd really like is to raise crops, primarily cereal-based, and god-willing, a family, so I was just testing whether the process of tightening nibs on a scythe is improved like some guy on the internet said by using a commonly available right-handed carriage bolt for a missing left-hand threaded nib."
If they stay, they're a keeper.
If they stay and laugh, it is meant to be.
If they stay and laugh and say, "Carriage bolt? Why doesn't he just make his own nib band by cold-forging some steel rod and using a left-handed die?" I want her.